A revolution (from the Latinrevolutio, "a turn around") is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time. Aristotle described two types of political revolution:

Scholarly debates about what does and does not constitute a revolution center on several issues. Early studies of revolutions primarily analyzed events in European history from a psychological perspective, but more modern examinations include global events and incorporate perspectives from several social sciences, including sociology and political science. Several generations of scholarly thought on revolutions have generated many competing theories and contributed much to the current understanding of this complex phenomenon.

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Etymology

The word "revolucion" is known in French from the 13th century, and "revolution" in English by the late fourteenth century, with regards to the revolving motion of celestial bodies. "Revolution" in the sense of representing abrupt change in a social order is attested by at least 1450.[2][3] Political usage of the term had been well established by 1688 in the description of the replacement of James II with William III. The process was termed "The Glorious Revolution".[4] Apparently the sense of social change and the geometric sense as in Surface of revolution developed in various European languages from Latin between the 14th and 17th centuries, the former developing as a metaphor from the latter. “Revolt” as an event designation appears after the process term and is given a related but distinct and later derivation.

There are many different typologies of revolutions in social science and literature. For example, classical scholar Alexis de Tocqueville differentiated[5] between political revolutions, sudden and violent revolutions that seek not only to establish a new political system but to transform an entire society, and slow but sweeping transformations of the entire society that take several generations to bring about (e.g., religion). One of several different Marxist typologies divides revolutions into pre-capitalist, early bourgeois, bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic, early proletarian, and socialist revolutions.[6]

an effort to transform the political institutions and the justifications for political authority in society, accompanied by formal or informal mass mobilization and noninstitutionalized actions that undermine authorities.[15]

Second generation theorists sought to develop detailed theories of why and when revolutions arise, grounded in more complex social behavior theories. They can be divided into three major approaches: psychological, sociological and political.[11]

The second generation theorists saw the development of the revolutions as a two-step process; first, some change results in the present situation being different from the past; second, the new situation creates an opportunity for a revolution to occur. In that situation, an event that in the past would not be sufficient to cause a revolution (e.g., a war, a riot, a bad harvest), now is sufficient; however, if authorities are aware of the danger, they can still prevent a revolution through reform or repression.[15]

In time, scholars began to analyze hundreds of other events as revolutions (see list of revolutions and rebellions), and differences in definitions and approaches gave rise to new definitions and explanations. The theories of the second generation have been criticized for their limited geographical scope, difficulty in empirical verification, as well as that while they may explain some particular revolutions, they did not explain why revolutions did not occur in other societies in very similar situations.[15]

The criticism of the second generation led to the rise of a third generation of theories, with writers such as Theda Skocpol, Barrington Moore, Jeffrey Paige and others expanding on the old Marxistclass conflict approach, turning their attention to rural agrarian-state conflicts, state conflicts with autonomous elites and the impact of interstate economic and military competition on domestic political change. Particularly Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions became one of the most widely recognized works of the third generation; Skocpol defined revolution as "rapid, basic transformations of society's state and class structures...accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below", attributing revolutions to a conjunction of multiple conflicts involving state, elites and the lower classes.[15]

Defining revolutions as mostly European violent state versus people and class struggles conflicts was no longer sufficient. The study of revolutions thus evolved in three directions, firstly, some researchers were applying previous or updated structuralist theories of revolutions to events beyond the previously analyzed, mostly European conflicts. Secondly, scholars called for greater attention to conscious agency in the form of ideology and culture in shaping revolutionary mobilization and objectives. Third, analysts of both revolutions and social movements realized that those phenomena have much in common, and a new 'fourth generation' literature on contentious politics has developed that attempts to combine insights from the study of social movements and revolutions in hopes of understanding both phenomena.[15] Revolutions have also been approached from anthropological perspectives. Drawing on Victor Turner’s writings on ritual and performance, Bjorn Thomassen[18] has argued that revolutions can be understood as “liminal” moments: Modern political revolutions very much resemble rituals and can therefore be studied within a process approach. This would imply not only a focus on political behaviour “from below”, but also to recognize moments where “high and low” are relativized, made irrelevant or subverted, and where the micro and macro levels fuse together in critical conjunctions.

References

^OED vol Q-R p. 617 1979 Sense III states a usage "Alteration, change, mutation" from 1400 but lists it as "rare". "c. 1450, Lydg 1196 Secrees of Elementys the Revoluciuons, Chaung of tymes and Complexiouns." It's clear that the usage had been established by the early 15th century but only came into common use in the late 17th in England.